Stellaris

Andrew

Anyone pick it up?

Apreche

My life isn't long enough for that game.

Cremlian

So is it Like CKII where you hit one slider wrong and everything goes into rebellion and 5 people declare war on you?

Otherwise.... I like 4x... it looks cool.... but overwhelming.

zehaeva

It's more like EU4 with some Endless Space. And overwhelming.

usrName

I'll be picking it up hopefully this week.

GreyHuge

I picked it up, seems alright so far. I haven't figured out optimal play yet though.

Linkigi(Link-ee-jee)

Played for six hours last night.
Started a game with the intent of being pre-Culture space puffins, made it to a point where I've discovered most of my equivtech neighbors and am starting to clear the more dangerous space amoebas.
Joined an alliance with some pacifists, and now they want to go to war while I just want to continue expanding.

I did make the mistake of not taking other colonization techs early enough; there's a bunch of space resources I want to grab, but I'm running out of influence to fund Frontier Outposts with.

Tl;dr: it's a damn good game.

Andrew

Good RPS writeup https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/05/09/stellaris-review-pc/

Cremlian

Hmmm I have 20 dollars in steam credit, but Paradox games do discount quickly.... hmmmm (and tend to have tons of DLC)

Linkigi(Link-ee-jee)

I fully expect to spend at least a hundred dollars on DLC during Stellaris' lifetime. Still probably worth it for me.

SWATrous

GreyHuge said:

I picked it up, seems alright so far. I haven't figured out optimal play yet though.

That seems a ridiculous statement to me.

I would think almost any strategy type game would take more than, say, a few play sessions to figure out how to even start thinking about how to develop optimal play strategies. Unless you're just going in having done lots of study and vidja research of those who've already figured it out, but even so.

Ikatono

For the next few days it's 25% off at GMG with the code "DEALZON25"

Hitman Hart

I keep waiting for someone to say that the Ur-Quan show up at the end of their game session and this is actually the prequel to Star Control 2.

Andrew

FUCK IT'S SO GOOD

GreyHuge

SWATrous said:

That seems a ridiculous statement to me.

I would think almost any strategy type game would take more than, say, a few play sessions to figure out how to even start thinking about how to develop optimal play strategies. Unless you're just going in having done lots of study and vidja research of those who've already figured it out, but even so.

You've got me there, I meant what the proper responses to certain situations in the game are, and how to determine what the situation you're in even is. Plus, paradox games have a tendency to have a pretty simple heuristic for things like combat. "Bring 4x more dudes and win" being pretty typical of EU4 and CK2.

Linkigi(Link-ee-jee)

Andrew said:

FUCK IT'S SO GOOD

open_sketchbook

There is something fucking rad about conquering some dudes, then fucking with their genome to make them conform to your values.

Alex

open_sketchbook said:

There is something fucking rad about conquering some dudes, then fucking with their genome to make them conform to your values.

As "statements about videogames that are incredibly disturbing in any other context" go, that one's way up there.

open_sketchbook

Lol.

I'm actually pretty disappointed (and looking to fix via modding...) with what you can do to people genewise.

If I'm playing a xenophobic expansionist race, I want to be able to really, really fuck with conquered peoples. Like, revert them to beasts, make them docile so they are easy to purge, extinguish the spark of creativity in them, make them cognitively incapable of rebellion, reduce their adaptability so they can't live anywhere I don't put a special structure. Make them into a grotesque semi-sentient parody that gives happiness to xenophobic pops by their presence. Make them unhappy if they aren't enslaved. That kind of thing.

And I want the galaxy to hate you for it. If you do it to an enemy civ, the surviving pops should swear an oath against you and rush to either rehabilitate their lost siblings or put their twisted brethren out of their misery. Xenophile nations should declare on you the minute they get the news. You should never be trusted anywhere ever again.

If you've ever read All Tommorows, I wanna either be, or face off against, the Qu.

(Actually, intergalactic gene-fuckers from beyond the stars would make an incredible endgame crisis...)

MATATAT

I'm sure there will be mods that fuel your crazy agenda and it's weirdly specific motives.

open_sketchbook

If there aren't, I'll do it myself. I love messing with Paradox games; I opened the mod tools before I actually launched the game.

Raithnor

Played around with it last night. Looks really good, but there's a lot of information overload.

One point in Paradox's favor is the Wiki page doesn't look like shit. (Shit being clogged with obnoxious ads)

Linkigi(Link-ee-jee)

Paradox actually sponsors the wikis for their games, so that's why none of them need Wikia ad garbage.

Naoza

Generally if I go to a Wikia and it looks like trash with it's ads, even after ublock does it's thing, I just add an exception in my browser to ignore all javascript on that domain. This doesn't just fix the page, but makes it much faster too.

MATATAT

I've never quite understood why games tend to use these garbage services for their wikis. I've looked at enough Wikia and Fextralife pages to hate it so much.

Linkigi(Link-ee-jee)

People use them because they're common (every game has a Wikia), and because they're free.
Paradox wikis can be not garbage primarily because Paradox actually pays for hosting and an administrator.

Banta

Name list based on The Culture series.

Cremlian

Man, they made this game really good for the first quarter, too bad they really didn't work out the mid and late game.. ughhhhhh

zehaeva

I got the echoes from deep space event series last night. That was painful. It seemed like the second I got the notification they were suddenly there messing my shit up. I thought that the crises were supposed to be more of a global event but they just landed in my space and ignored anyone else.

I'm running a fairly large empire so I have the resources to deal with 10 -15 stacks of 20k-30k ships but it's slow going. The only thing saving me is being able to custom tailor my ships to be able to fight them more effectively so I can take them on with a less powerful force than them (1:2.5 ratio seems to be the best I can get)

But man is it slow in the end game.

I can see where this makes a pretty good basic 4x game. But having hundreds of hours into EU4 kind of gave me a hope for more. I do really look forward towards the expansions. I think that's when paradox will make the game really shine.

Cremlian

I got into a federation and the way that works is super crazy boring. You have to wait your turn to be the head of the federation, there is no way to petition the current head of the federation to actually do what you want them to do foreign policy wise. You just gotta wait your 10 years or so for your turn and hope that it's the best time to make your move...

Raithnor

I think I've got the basics down. I even managed to fine an Derelict Alien Cruiser and rebuilt it into my Military's flagship. (I can only build corvettes and am just about to build destroyers.)

Still working on opening game strategy, minerals seem the big stumbling block so far.

One thing I'm not crazy about how quest rewards are hidden in the quest tooltips. Sometimes it hard to tell what I'm getting out of these research projects other than "Well that's interesting."